This Day in History
1967: Astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee die when fire breaks out on Apollo I while it is on the ground during a simulation test at Cape Kennedy, FL.
1973: The Vietnam War officially ends when the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong sign a peace pact in Paris. The end of the military draft in the United States is announced.
1987: Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opens a plenary session of the Communist Party Central Committee with a stunning call for major political reforms, including new procedures to elect party officials.
1998: During a TV interview, Hillary Rodham Clinton says that independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation is part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband."
2002: More than 1,000 people are killed in Nigeria when an army weapons depot explodes near a crowded residential area of Lagos.
2003: As the U.S. and its coalition partners continue their military build-up in the Persian Gulf, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix accuses Iraq of failure to cooperate in accounting for and removing its weapons of mass destruction.
Today's Birthdays
1756: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer (Salzburg, Austria; died 1791)
1775: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, German philosopher (Leonberg, Germany; died 1854)
1832: Lewis Carroll (Charles Dodgson), children's author and mathematician (Cheshire, England; died 1898)
1850: Samuel Gompers, labor leader and first president of the AFL (London, England; died 1924)
1859: William II, emperor of Germany and king of Prussia (Berlin, Germany; died 1941)
1885: Jerome Kern, composer (New York, NY; died 1945)
1900: Hyman Rickover, admiral known as the "Father of the Nuclear Navy" (Russia; died 1986)
1918: Skitch Henderson, bandleader (Halstad, MN; died 2005)
1931: Mordecai Richler, author (Montreal, Quebec, Canada; died 2001)
1936: Troy Donahue, actor (New York, NY; died 2001). Samuel C. C. Ting, American nuclear physicist and Nobel laureate (Ann Arbor, MI)
1955: John G. Roberts, 17th chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (Buffalo, NY)
1956: Mimi Rogers, actress (Coral Gables, FL)
1964: Bridget Fonda, actress (Los Angeles, CA)
1979: Rosamund Pike, actress (London England)
